1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet printing apparatus and a method for selecting a print mode. More particularly, the present invention relates to an ink jet printing apparatus and a method which are capable of automatically selecting the print mode in accordance with a print medium such as paper which is used for the ink jet printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
The recent rapid improvement of image quality and rapid price-reduction on color printers, coupled with popularization of digital cameras, has allowed anyone to obtain an environment of easily outputting, at home, a print having image quality the same as that of a silver halide photograph. In particular, an ink jet printer is one outputting high image quality and is relatively low-priced. Additionally, the ink jet printer has received broad support by users as a printer capable of printing on print medium such as plain paper, coated paper or glossy paper, on a special medium such as canvas paper, Japanese-paper or cloth, and further on a print medium such as CDs or DVDs including an ink receiving layer.
Print media for various uses are now available for such ink jet printers. A user of a printer may buy genuine papers sold by the same maker as that of the printer held by the user, and alternatively may buy non-genuine paper sold by another maker.
In a case of the former, since software such as a printer driver of a printer generally includes print modes corresponding to a print sheet that a user buys, printing can be satisfactorily performed when the user properly selects the print mode in accordance with the bought print sheet. In a case of the later, if a recommended print mode for the printer held by a user is designated on a bought non-genuine medium, the user can select the print mode in accordance with the designation.
However, in the case where the recommended print mode is not designated on the non-genuine medium, or where the printer held by the user is not designated on the non-genuine medium, the user may not decide which print mode set in the printer should be selected for printing on the print sheet that the user bought.
There are various categories of print sheet, e.g. plain paper, coated paper, glossy paper, semi-glossy paper and mat paper. A category of print sheet is frequently selected, through the printer driver, with use of the proper name of genuine paper of a printer maker. Thus, there is a possibility that a user having little knowledge regarding the print sheet hardly knows which genuine paper corresponds to the non-genuine medium. In particular, in the case where there are three or four types of genuine media for the glossy paper, the user is further confused.
In this case, when the user selects any one of the print modes for printing, the selected print mode may be inappropriate. For example, when a print mode in which ink is possibly applied to a print medium used for printing at an amount more than an ink absorbable amount of a receiving layer of the print medium used is selected, the whole ink can not be absorbed in a region where an ink ejection amount on an image is great. In this case, the ink is accumulated in the vicinity of the surface layer of the print medium, and a so-called beading phenomenon occurs where large lined beads are formed by the surface tension of ink. When the beading phenomenon occurs, the granularity is greatly increased and the quality of the image is lowered.
Additionally, the ink jet printer, in many cases, performs so-called multi-pass printing where printing is dividedly performed by a plurality of passes (scans). Generally, for the print medium such as plain paper in which the ink easily bleeds, positional deviation of dots and unevenness of the diameters of the dots, which are formed on the print sheet with the ink ejected from a nozzle of a print head, hardly noticeable due to the bleeding of ink. From this point of view, in the case of using such paper, it becomes possible to perform printing in a print mode having a relatively small number of passes. For example, one-pass printing for performing printing with one pass or the multi-pass printing of two-pass which has a relatively small number of passes, can be performed on the plain paper. On the other hand, a print mode in which printing with a relatively large number of passes is performed is applicable to a print medium such as glossy paper, glossy film and the like, for which the ink hardly bleeds and thus printing is sensitive to the positional deviation of the dots and the unevenness of the diameter of the dots. For example, further multi-pass printing such as 8-pass printing or 16-pass printing is required for the above print medium compared with one-pass or two-pass printing for the plain paper. If a user selects a print mode of a relatively small number of passes for the print medium for which a print mode of a relatively large number of passes should be selected by right, a so-called banding occurs, which is a band-shaped density unevenness caused by the above described dot positional deviation or the like.
Additionally, a connection stripe which is caused at a connection portion between the passes is known as one of the causes of the banding. Specifically, ink ejected at the connection portion during a certain pass bleeds into the connection portion to which ink is ejected during another pass to locally increase the density of connection portion, and thus the connection stripe occurs. In the case where the number of passes is small and thus a print duty per one time of pass is high, the connection stripe is more likely to occur. Further, in so-called bidirectional printing where the print head is made to reciprocate in a main-scanning direction so that printing is performed during a forward scan and a backward scan, landing orders of inks having different colors onto the print medium are different between the forward scan and the backward scan. This may cause the tints of the dots finally formed with inks of different colors to be different between the forward scan and the backward scan. Macroscopically viewing this, this difference appears as so-called bidirectional color unevenness in which it is recognized that the color of the region for which printing is performed by the forward scan is different from that of the region for which printing is performed by the backward scan. Moreover, the details of a mechanism for causing the banding phenomenon are disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-106522 disclosing the invention of the inventors of this application. In the case where the phenomenon occurs in multi-pass printing, generally, the bidirectional color unevenness becomes more noticeable as the number of passes is smaller. Additionally, permeation and color development of the ink are severely affected by the phenomenon, and the level of occurrence of the phenomenon is largely varied also depending on type of a print medium used.
As described above, the banding phenomenon perceived as the band-shaped density unevenness in a sub-scanning direction may occur due to the connection stripe or the bidirectional color unevenness, and the banding tends to become more noticeable when the number of passes is smaller, correspondingly to the print medium used for printing.
As described above, if printing is performed in the print mode selected by a user selects in an uncertain expectation, to the print medium held by the user, and the print medium is not appropriate one for the selected print mode, the beading and banding possibly occur and cause deterioration in the quality of a printed image.
Further, in this instance, there is a possibility that inefficient work is repeated, which is printing operation in another print mode and recheck in the case where trouble occurs in a result of printing performed in the print mode selected by the user. Additionally, such repetition of test printing for searching an optimum print mode results in waste of print sheet and ink.
On the other hand, in the field of ink jet printing, it is known that a printing manner is automatically adjusted or controlled in a printer or the like based on a result of printing that actually prints test patterns or patches.
A representative example of the technology is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-106367. The patent document discloses a technology where printing arbitrary pattern for color adjustment is performed and a user views a print result of the pattern to perform a desirable color adjustment.
Additionally, a calibration system and a profile creation system are available, which employ a scanner or spectrophotometric calorimeter having high precision, as a method other than that disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-106367. In the systems, the printer is made to print a predetermined patch, colorimetry is performed with use of the scanner or spectrophotometric calorimeter, and a LUT table for correcting color is recreated or a parameter for adjusting color is adjusted based on the colorimetry result, so that a desirable color is outputted onto print medium as desired by the user.
However, the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-106367 is only a technology for adjusting a tint. Although the color adjustment can be performed for a non-genuine record medium with use of the disclosed technology, the disclosed technology cannot prevent beading and banding from occurring due to an excess of ink ejection amount and mismatch of the number of passes respectively.
Additionally, in the case of the above available systems, the user has to determine which print mode of the printer is used for the held print medium in printing a patch for creating a color correction table. Accordingly, in the case where an inappropriate print mode is selected, there still remains the possibility that the beading phenomenon or banding phenomenon occurs.
As described above, for adjustment of color, a system such as the calibration system and the profile creation system, which is based on the actual print of the test patterns or patches, has been conventionally used. However, these systems are insufficient in properly performing printing on a print medium such as a non-genuine medium other than the print media preset in accordance with the print modes of the printer.
Moreover, in print medium available by various makers, a same glossy paper type or a same mat paper type may have different bleeding rates and different color development properties from one another, and thus there are many cases where the banding occurs or does not occur for the same number of passes. Accordingly, it is remarkably difficult for users to estimate the necessary number of passes based on only the type of print medium (for example, either glossy paper type or mat paper type).